Marketers offer unique opportunity to start-up firms

Media planning agency MEC, is offering three digital start-ups the opportunity to work in partnership with top global brands and receive guidance from its expert business mentors.

MEC Wavemaker, the new content specialist division at MEC in Manchester, is launching a start-up hub competition to give three ‘cutting-edge start-ups’ the chance to secure a commercial partnership with MEC and its clients, which include Comparethemarket.com, EE, Jet2 and Great Western Rail.

The aim of the competition is to forge strong links between promising entrepreneurs and leading brands, and inspire creative thinking to generate new ideas for the industry.

MEC Manchester will choose six digital and tech start-up semi-finalists who will be invited to battle it out in a Dragon’s Den style contest at SAScon, the UK’s finest search, analytics and social media conference, on 17 June.

The businesses will have to pitch their business proposition to a judging panel including senior MEC execs, leading figureheads from Tech City North and Jonathan Bowers, managing director at UKFast, which is the event’s headline sponsor.

Hannah Blake, open innovation director at MEC UK, said: “MEC Wavemaker is all about encouraging creative thinking to create compelling content and who better to learn from than those working at the cutting edge of innovation. MEC and our clients have so much to gain from inviting bright entrepreneurs into our environment and I believe we can also add huge value in helping start-ups to scale and prosper.”

Richard Gregory, co-founder at SAScon said: “SAScon is an event organised by the digital community for the digital community. And so we are proud to play host to the MEC Wavemaker start-up hub as we believe more initiatives like this one are needed to give new emerging digital businesses the support and guidance they need to succeed.

“We are anticipating that the MEC Wavemaker panel will be one of the highlights of this year’s conference as it will really showcase the exceptional talent that the North West is housing.”